Gov. Chris Christie, shown here during his budget address last week, is providing more dollars to public education and health care programs that he has slashed in previous budgets.Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-Ledger

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie’s proposed election-year budget provides dollars for all kinds of programs he took flack for cutting in the past, including public education and health care.

Those moves may save the governor some of the fiercest criticism his past budgets received. But the fine print shows Christie traded in large budget cuts in key areas for other cuts and a few gimmicks. Together, they allow him to extract more than $1 billion without rocking the boat too much.

He’s cutting unspecified “miscellaneous commissions” by $200,000, delaying $392 million in property tax rebates by three months to plug a shortfall in the current budget, raiding $152 million from the state Clean Energy Fund, and potentially underfunding his transportation improvement plan by $325 million.

It’s what you’d expect from a popular Republican governor running for re-election in a left-leaning state, said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University who said it’s in Christie’s best interest to avoid another budget slugfest.

“Not that this is a Democratic budget, but you can see that it’s really apparent that he put that conservative national constituency of his on the back burner,” Harrison said.

The biggest shift: expanding the state’s Medicaid program under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. About 300,000 more people would be eligible, and Christie estimates 104,000 will enroll.

Christie pitched the move as providing health insurance to “tens of thousands of low-income New Jerseyans” while helping hospitals and saving money for New Jersey taxpayers. It came after the governor had criticized Obama’s health care law for years.

While Christie angered some conservatives, health care advocates were thrilled — and his new budget was bolstered by $227 million because the feds would take on more costs.

Democrats who praised Christie for this said one good move doesn’t erase three years of declining health-care services. In 2010, Christie started to tighten eligibility requirements for NJFamilyCare — a popular Medicaid offshoot — leaving more than 46,000 people without coverage, said state Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex).

“We’re losing tens of thousands of parents every year because of this policy. So no, things have not improved, they’ve gone backward,” said Vitale, chairman of the Senate health committee.

For the first time since he’s been governor, Christie is planning to increase funding or avoid reductions in all 580 school districts, adding an extra $97 million in the budget. Of those districts, 202 would see their funding remain flat while 378 would see increases — including 40 that will get an extra $1 in state aid.

But Christie cut $820 million from schools in 2010 and those cuts have not been fully restored yet, Democrats said.

“He says it’s risen from 2011, but that’s only because he cut it so much in 2010,” said Assembly Budget Chairman Vincent Prieto (D-Hudson).

The governor’s spokesman, Michael Drewniak, said Christie had to make those cuts in 2010 because his predecessor, Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, used more than $1 billion in one-time federal stimulus dollars for education spending in his last budget.

“It truly was a budgeting debacle,” Drewniak said. “It was an election-year gimmick with no consideration of the next budget or how such a large sum of free federal money would be replaced the following year.”

State aid to towns is also flat in Christie’s new budget, said East Windsor Mayor Janice Mironov, president of the state League of Municipalities. She urged Christie to return energy tax receipts to local governments. Last year, Christie took $66 million in those funds for the state budget, and he’s planning to repeat that.

Mironov said there’s a “general tendency” of kicking costs to towns. As a result, Christie and others can characterize “their budget situation as positive, but maybe not fully addressing the fact that the budget may result in less services, higher taxes or other sorts of implications on lower levels of government.”

Christie is also attempting to stave off critics of his transportation capital plan. Instead of making a $260 million contribution for highway and bridge projects last year, Christie took those funds to plug a budget gap and borrowed the money — a move that drew some rare criticism from Republican lawmakers.

This year, Christie again won’t make his planned contribution of $374.8 million from the budget. Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff said the state won’t have to borrow any extra money because refinancing some transportation bonds would solve the problem.

Assemblyman John Wisnewski, chairman of the transportation committee, said Christie needs legislative approval to refinance bonds, and the latest proposal from the governor would only net an extra $50 million — which would leave the capital plan $325 million short. Christie should just raise the gas tax to fix a blighted patchwork of roads in the state, Wisniewski said.

Editor's note: A previous version of this article incorrectly reported the amount Gov. Chris Christie's new budget would cut from "miscellaneous commissions." The proposed reduction is $200,000, not $200 million.